No idea, though my old Hotmail account still works. It's just through Outlook (which, admittedly, is a lot more user-friendly, though I still prefer Gmail). I believe they replaced Hotmail back in 2013. Outlook has been a part of MS Office for decades. I'm guessing they wanted to bring all of their e-mail services under one name.

If you go to outlook.com and scroll all the way to the bottom, you'll see the Microsoft logo.

If you wanted to send sensitive info by email, you'd put it in an encrypted file and ensure only you and the recipient have the decryption key. I'm not being naive here but unless you are on some sort of government watchlist nobody gives a single crap what any of us send via email. The absolute worst case scenario is you get targeted adverts when browsing. Google have 1 billion accounts all sending emails every day, if someone was really going to read every single one of them then pretty much everyone in the whole world would be employed by Google to read each others emails!

I wouldn't feel safer about any free alternative email provider, something has to pay the bills. I don't mean they snoop your email for money, but targeted advertisements are the best way of generating ad revenue.

But you can get decent service for relatively cheap, for example I've heard good things about Posteo.de.

Oh, and you could also use GPG with your mails, though obviously metadata is as collectible as ever, aka. the provider will see who you mailed and when.

But if you want freedom from the mass surveillance we have today, some quite extreme measures are necessary... Like using Tails as your OS. But oh wait, Intel Management Engine still runs and can in theory be used to still track you.

Rebranding to make Microsoft's free email more professional. Welcome to Microsoft's world.

Tbh, If you don't like the idea of being spied on you'll have your work cut out. You should be alright (or rather, not the focus of whatever nation state) unless you're up to something deemed suspicious..

-edit- If you want a secure email account, Protonmail is pretty good. Although you are then relying on whoever is receiving/sending the mail to not be compromised

If you don't want to use Hotmail your ISP should provide you with a few.

__________________He used to do surgery
For girls in the eighties
But gravity always wins

Who do you think you are? running 'round leaving scars. Collecting your jar of hearts, tearing love apart. You're gonna catch a cold, from the ice inside your soul, so don't come back for me, don't come back at all.